Washington -- President
Bush, in his September 23 speech to the United Nations
General Assembly in New York, will discuss many of the
challenges the world faces today, National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice said in a September 22 briefing at the
White House.

Bush, she said, "will call on the
international community to take action to make our world a
safer and better place. The president will stress the
international community's opportunity and responsibility to
help the people of Iraq and Afghanistan rebuild their
countries. He will also discuss the many ways the world will
benefit from an Iraq and Afghanistan that are free,
prosperous, modern and democratic.

"The president will
address the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,
the greatest security challenge of our time. He will outline
current international efforts to stop the spread of
dangerous weapons materials and technologies.

"The
president will also discuss the ongoing need to address
humanitarian crises, such as HIV/AIDS and famine, and he
will call upon U.N. and member states to do everything
possible to stop trafficking in persons, a modern-day form
of slavery that claims millions of victims, many of them
young children."

The president and first lady will arrive
in New York the morning of September 23.

Bush will meet
with U.N. General Assembly President Julian Robert Hunte of
Saint Lucia and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan before
addressing the General Assembly later in the
morning.

After the speech, the president will hold a
series of bilateral meetings with world leaders. Those
include President Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, President
Jacques Chirac of France, President Sukarnoputri Megawati of
Indonesia, King Mohamed VI of Morocco, President Hamid
Karzai of Afghanistan.

That evening, the president and
Mrs. Bush will host a reception for the heads of delegations
at New York's Museum of Natural History.

On Wednesday
morning, September 24, the president will hold another
series of meetings, including a Caribbean leaders breakfast
with Prime Minister Perry Christie of the Bahamas, Prime
Minister Keith Mitchell of Grenada, President Bharrat Jagdeo
of Guyana, Prime Minister Kenny Davis Anthony of Saint
Lucia, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany, President
John Agyekum Kufuor of Ghana, President Pervez Musharraf of
Pakistan, President Joaquim Alberto Chissano of Mozambique,
and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India.

Asked
about U.S. plans for Iraq, Rice said "the most important
thing" is that the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi
people be orderly and that it be done in a way that it's
going to work.

"This is a country that has been under
brutal dictatorship for decades and for the last almost 30
years under the most brutal dictatorship imaginable. And
it's a country that's not had a national conversation about
its politics in more than 30 years. It's a country that
needs an orderly process to get to the writing of a
constitution, which, after all, will create the institutions
on which a new society in Iraq can be based," she said.

"A
constitution, after all, deals with issues like the rights
and protections of minorities, the importance of the rights
and protections of women. Those are the kinds of issues that
get institutionalized in a constitution."

Rice said a plan
suggested by J. Paul Bremer, the Coalition Provisional
Authority administrator for Iraq, envisions "a constitution,
followed then by elections and then by the transfer of
sovereignty. And it makes perfectly good sense to do this as
soon as possible, but to do it in a way that is
responsible."

She said a proposal advanced by the French
government "which would somehow try to transfer sovereignty
to an unelected group of people, just isn't
workable."

"[W]hat we want to do is we want to concentrate
on the steps that need to be taken: national conversation,
constitution, elections and transfer of sovereignty. Those
are the steps that need to be taken. We'll see how long it
takes. But I think everybody can be assured the
establishment of sovereignty for the Iraqi people is the
goal of everybody, most especially of the United States. But
I think what you've heard from now a number of Iraqi voices
is, 'Let's do that in an orderly way, so that it
works.'"

The draft U.N. resolution on Iraq that the United
States is working on with other countries "has to do what is
best for the future of Iraq and for the future of the Iraqi
people and frankly for the tremendous responsibilities that
the United States and the coalition have taken on in
liberating Iraq and now trying to deal with the
reconstruction, " Rice said.

"So a resolution that gives a
proper role to the United Nations, one like the president
described, in which the United Nations will clearly play a
vital role, is a good thing. But it cannot be something that
tries to give premature sovereignty -- what, you know --
sort of sovereignty -- not real sovereignty, sovereignty in
principle -- those ideas are just not going to work. We've
got to have an orderly process."

In response to the challenges facing Scoop and the media industry we’ve instituted an Ethical Paywall to keep the news freely available to the public.
Organisations whose staff use Scoop at work need to be licensed through a ScoopPro subscription under this new model, these users get access to exclusive news tools.
If you love Scoop you can also support through a monthly donation as a Foundation Supporter.

After the bizarre events this week in Helsinki, the world will be hoping and praying that the US midterm elections in November can put a restraining brake on the presidency of Donald Trump. This may happen, but there’s a highly undemocratic reason why such hopes may be frustrated. More>>

For someone routinely cast as a clown presiding over an administration in chaos, Donald Trump has been very consistent about his agenda, and remarkably successful in achieving it, in the short term at least. More>>

“The recently enacted Administration of Justice Act 2018 is another clear sign of the deterioration of civil rights in Nauru,” the Law Society’s Rule of Law Committee convenor Austin Forbes QC says. More>>